Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

Post by noselasd » Thu, Aug 14, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

galleywest200 wrote: post #158

ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Physical media offers the first three, but not option four. I, too, would pay per show/movie to download and save DRM-free videos to my own drives.

Post by dborzov » Thu, Aug 14, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

platevoltage wrote: post #66

squigz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already came full circle some years ago when we started seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies pulling their content from other platforms to put on their own. Then you had to start thinking about what servces you need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like cable! Absurd.

True, although I guess this is sort of understandable. It's the "you're paying us, but here are some ads" that really gets me. Either way, 5 bucks a month to Emby, a really easy to get membership to a large private torrent site, and a 16TB hard drive solves these problems for me, and will continue to.

Post by piffey » Thu, Aug 14, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

bkettle wrote: post #172

parpfish wrote: post #108

i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix. the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable levels of screentime and VERY diverse content. i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of watching them someday, but always put them off because something about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave…

I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to bu…

Post by easwee » Thu, Aug 14, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

Post by sneak » Thu, Aug 14, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

wrasee wrote: post #161

ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Supply and demand might argue that if there was real demand for something like this that people were actually willing to pay a lot of money for, then the market would be all too happy to provide. I think the inconvenient truth here is that when anyone has got close to doing such a thing the price has been high enough that it turns out nobody actually turns up to pay for it, not at least outside a small niche.